0:00
All right, today we're talking about trends.
Search this video
0:01
So, I have a list that I've been keeping.
0:04
I want to bring it to you today and riff on those with you because a lot of success in business just comes from surfing the right wave.
0:18
I think founders like to believe that it's our own genius that's causing our success.
0:23
And when it's failure, then it's market conditions.
0:27
And actually often it's the opposite.
0:29
It's the market conditions that can create success or really amplify your success.
0:33
And I've learned the hard way that the most important thing is finding the right wave to surf.
0:37
Have you ever been on the inside of a product that has taken off like that? I I haven't.
0:42
Uh but like I've had friends who they'd be texting me as it was happening.
0:46
But have you ever uh seen that? Yeah, a couple of them.
0:51
Um there's one that we did recently that I invested in my friend and they're doing a I can't say I don't want to say the thing cuz the trend is like still going.
1:01
It's still hot right now.
1:01
But it's a health it's a health supplement.
1:03
And so like you know in in the health world there's just like every few years there's a new diet trend.
1:10
There's a new like um you know, few years ago a big thing was like leaky gut.
1:14
It was like, "Oh my god, gut health, leaky gut.
1:16
I got to do something about that."
1:18
And so there's these things that just come in these waves of awareness.
1:21
And um so we backed one of those and it just is crazy growth.
1:26
I mean zero to 30 million in 1 year. It's It's just wild. And so like profitably.
1:31
Like there's just a like crazy growth.
1:33
We have another um company that we started that I haven't announced yet. Maybe I'll do that soon.
1:37
Um but we have another one in that space that's kind of like the same thing.
1:41
As you you know, in 1 year just doing millions in recurring revenue profitably. It's just like wow.
1:49
And and it's not because we did something so much better as much as we worked harder.
1:55
It's not because we were smarter.
1:58
We didn't have some genius strategy.
1:58
We just picked something that was like had market pull.
2:02
Inherently the market wanted this.
2:04
And all you had to do was show up, you know.
2:05
It's you're selling cold waters on a hot day.
2:07
That's that's really the what I what I want to do.
2:09
So, in any case, here's a bunch of trends.
2:11
I think I have three or four trends that I think are going to be really big.
2:16
I think if you watch this episode 2 years from now, uh a lot of this will be proven right.
2:21
And then I have some bonus ones for you. All right, you ready? Yeah, let's do it.
2:24
All right, trend number one. Short drama apps. So, what what are these?
2:29
If you remember a few years ago, there's this company called Quibi that was started by Jeffrey Katzenberg who created DreamWorks.
2:34
I think Meg Whitman, the former CEO of HP. Well, who is she there?
2:41
I don't know who she is, but she was somebody. Big deal. eBay, Silicon Valley. eBay. And and HP. So, Quibi raised $1.
2:47
75 billion in funding pre-launch. Pre-launch. Pre-launch. To build this out.
2:54
And they were like, "Look, the future is short form.
2:56
You see what's happening with TikTok."
2:58
This is early days of TikTok.
3:00
You see what's happening with TikTok? Well, guess what?
3:01
That's what the next Netflix is going to look like.
3:05
It's going to look like TikTok content. And they take their 1. 7 1.
3:07
75 billion dollars of funding.
3:10
They hire a crack team in in in Silicon Valley, fancy offices. They got the executives.
3:16
Dude, they came to our office to to pitch you and I to like they wanted Shot at Samer or like MFM to be like a content series.
3:22
And I was like, "Guys, we're behind our laptops all day.
3:24
Like this isn't interesting."
3:25
They were like uh "We need you guys for business unscripted."
3:29
And we were like, "What?"
3:32
What does that even mean?
3:33
They're like, "There's a it's a category."
3:34
We're like, "We're in that?"
3:37
They're like, "Okay, never mind."
3:39
So, they they you know, they wanted content.
3:41
They needed content on the platform.
3:42
Anyways, Quibi launches, fails in under a year. So, 1.
3:45
75 billion, all this talent, all the resources, all the brand name, the guy created DreamWorks and in under a year it folds, didn't work.
3:52
And they were mocked and I thought that was kind of nonsense.
3:54
I thought it was a great like that's what you you take swings.
4:00
Just in the arena doing stuff.
4:00
Yeah, I mean like it was like it was like uh you know, they tried something.
4:07
You know, who am I to mock them for that?
4:09
People don't like when people with pedigree and resources go after something.
4:14
They like when you're the underdog.
4:15
So, the consensus opinion since then has just been Quibi equals failure.
4:21
That whole category, failure.
4:23
Well, quietly in the meantime, a handful of apps have basically run where Quibi crawled.
4:29
And they are doing pretty much exactly the same thing but to tremendous success.
4:34
I don't know if you've seen any of these apps.
4:37
Can I tell you about some of these? Tell me.
4:40
So, they all started in China.
4:40
They're Chinese companies, but they're big in the United States.
4:46
Um so, for example, here's I'm just going to tell you the revenue of the top four apps.
4:51
Revenue of the top four apps.
4:52
150 million, that's number four.
4:52
160 million, that's number three. 275 million annual.
4:57
And the top one, 315 million dollars. Okay, that's insane. Isn't that insane?
5:02
Okay, so how do these work?
5:04
So, I I downloaded a couple of these. I watched them.
5:06
Now, what they did that was very very smart was they realized the American consumer is pretty much an idiot.
5:14
And what Jeffrey Katzenberg did wrong was he tried to give people what they should want rather than what they do want.
5:19
And what they should want was well-made um you know, these these series that were really cool, premium.
5:28
Hey, we're not going to do that short form just rubbish.
5:31
We're going to do Netflix original level content but just made for your phone, 10 to 15-minute episodes.
5:39
And you'll pay for it because otherwise how are we going to fund these things that are like millions of dollars?
5:42
Artsy So, these guys came out.
5:45
I'll I'll give you an example of one of them.
5:46
So, one of them's called Drama Box.
5:49
The other one's called Real Short.
5:50
And um I'm just going to show you the the first one on this.
5:55
Can you read the title of that?
5:56
The Yeah, it's called Pregnant with my brother's baby.
6:02
And I didn't just show him uh you know, Pornhub.
6:05
I did This is the This is a real thing, right?
6:07
So, these are all It's kind of trashy soap opera style stuff.
6:11
Now, what they did differently was the the key changes from Quibi was free instead of paid.
6:15
So, you you Quibi was a subscription you had to pay for.
6:19
This is free, but you pay to unlock more episodes.
6:21
So, you get hooked on one of these little dramas and then you sort of buy coins to unlock the next episodes as you get once you get hooked.
6:28
So, they lowered the friction.
6:30
The next thing was they did kind of trashy TV.
6:32
They did, you know, Hallmark and Maury Povich have a baby.
6:37
That's the type of content that this is.
6:39
Like I watched one um Honestly, wasn't bad to be honest. Can I not going to lie?
6:45
Like it's bad, but it's not like like I watched four episodes.
6:48
I probably only needed to watch one for for my research.
6:53
And the episodes are only 90 seconds long.
6:55
So, it's not that big of a commitment. All right, my friends.
6:58
So, a lot of you guys who listen to show, you listen because you want to start a company, but you're not sure what idea to choose or you may not even have an idea and you like our podcast My First Million because we've done a lot of the work for you on researching all these business ideas.
7:12
Well, my friends, we've made life a lot easier for you because HubSpot, they just put together an entire list of all the resources that you can use to find a market opportunity to validate for your next business idea.
7:24
So, if you're looking for a market size calculator or tools to identify market trends or a huge list of ideas to get started.
7:33
So, if you're interested, there's a link below.
7:34
Click it and you can have access to the whole thing. It's completely free. Now, back to the show.
7:40
Whenever I think of these, uh I think of in on Wedding Crashers where there's the Jamaican guy.
7:45
He's like the butler and they're like trying to like bother him.
7:49
He's like, "Hey, I'm watching my stories, man."
7:50
Like it's his time to watch his soap operas and like you can't interrupt you can't interrupt anyone when they're watching their stories cuz the soap operas are so good.
7:56
And you know that we talked about this.
7:59
Uh we talked about this in 2019 or 2020, right?
8:06
What do you mean we talked about it?
8:07
What did What did we say then?
8:08
So, uh we talked about it in a few ways.
8:11
The first was there is this massive trend of these This was when YouTube was uh obviously it was not up and coming. It was already up.
8:19
But in '19 and '18, there was these guys making these somewhat tacky dramas and they were doing something very different on YouTube.
8:28
They were making like 30-minute fictional videos on YouTube and it was like tacky in the sense of it was like a soap opera clearly appealing to middle America women.
8:37
So, it was like a little like cringey but very addicting.
8:39
Do you remember these guys that they would get like 8 million followers or they were making Facebook uh videos where it was like huge dramas or it was like the kid who got bullied on the bus and how he grew up to become president.
8:52
Do you remember these like 20-minute videos?
8:55
there's been some YouTube series like this.
8:58
And I get By the way, I get sucked down this like rabbit hole like often where like I'm on Facebook and it's like a kid getting bullied and like it's like very unclear message. research. Yeah, yeah.
9:09
Like it it's hard to turn away.
9:11
And then also, I told you the story about when I was helping Ramone, he his original idea for a business was to do erotic fiction Audible stories.
9:21
And we we ran a test and on like 50 bucks of ads I think romance.
9:29
It was short form romance.
9:31
Romance is very different, right? It was erotic.
9:34
It was like No, it was like sex.
9:36
It was like expl- It was like it was for women. So tasteful, though. They were in love.
9:43
It was not It was uh romantic sex. Yeah.
9:48
And basically what we did was we uh he had a friend who loved writing these stories.
9:52
He wrote one of these stories and And he had a Fiverr voice actor read it.
9:57
and then we ran an ad uh and we called it Captivating Claire, I think.
10:02
I forget what we called it, but we called it short but romantic and we spent like 50 bucks running ads and we got like $100 in recurring revenue on a crappy WordPress site.
10:10
And like anyway, my point being is like all signs have pointed to yeah, this makes sense.
10:14
And so like for example, this one that I watched is called Heiress Crash Lands on Her Husband. And um I think I lied.
10:22
I'm on episode six actually.
10:24
So what happens is the story starts and it's this girl she's so excited this guy's going to propose to her.
10:30
She thinks he thinks she's a DoorDasher, but actually she's a billionaire heiress, but she hid that from him because she doesn't want him to want her for the money and she's so happy that he's going to propose to her.
10:41
And uh blah blah blah, but then um his mother-in-law's like she's not good enough for you.
10:45
How about this other girl?
10:46
And then she's like you don't even know who I am and then she reveals it and I'm like oh cliffhanger like I got to got to see more.
10:52
So what they're doing is 60 to 100 seconds you free to watch, you pay for more and these things are growing like crazy.
10:59
And so they you know, I guess half of China's internet users are watching these what they call mini dramas. And guess what?
11:08
I think that a lot of Americans are going to do this too.
11:10
I think a lot of Americans are going to watch mini dramas and these will continue to grow.
11:15
I'd be very interested to see if some if an American company can come out and do this.
11:21
Um and do it maybe better than than just today the top four I think they're all Chinese companies.
11:27
And I don't think that's going to last or maybe it will last like TikTok, but I think there's an opportunity for somebody to do this.
11:32
I also not just in the states.
11:34
So for example, my mom for years when she comes over to my house, it's wonderful.
11:41
We hang out, we have fun, we eat together, we talk together, she plays with the grandkids. Like it's all great.
11:46
But then there's this moment at 9:30 at night where I just hear the most annoying sounds on TV and it's these special effects coming from what she likes to call her Pakistani dramas.
11:54
And it's basically soap operas from Pakistan that she likes to watch and she's Indian, but she's like they make the juicier stuff.
12:01
They make the better ones.
12:03
And I'm like where did you find these and how many episodes are there?
12:06
She's watched like the series will have 650 episodes and she'll like finish multiple of these series.
12:11
And it's not just her, all her sisters love this and they're just watching these on YouTube today and they're like you know, 15-20 minute episodes.
12:17
And so um I looked up some of these and like if you go to look at their YouTube channels, the top 10 uh of these will have like 4 billion views.
12:29
I remember when people were talking about uh YouTubers and I just remember being like this was a long time ago, but I was like I only watch a YouTube video when somebody sends me a link of like a funny clip from Saturday Night Live or a basketball highlight.
12:40
Like I don't just go to YouTube and browse to see what's on.
12:44
I thought that was like a wild weird behavior that we people were doing.
12:46
And sure enough now I do that every single day. I do it every day. Every single day.
12:52
Like that's my thing by the way.
12:53
I think it's a it's a young person thing and then people our age it's only men.
12:56
But did you think you would do that when you first saw that people do that?
12:59
Cuz like No, I I had like the same thing of watching video games.
13:03
I don't even play video games, but sometimes I'll watch people play.
13:05
I had a Twitter account for years before I ever tweeted a single word.
13:07
I was like why would I ever just tweet?
13:10
I'm not going to try to do that. Like I'll just consume.
13:13
And so like some of these behaviors actually take a lot of time to to kind of propagate.
13:18
And it's it's sort of like in the tech world they say like you know, what the nerds are doing on the weekends we'll all do in 10 years.
13:24
I think there's like a version of that in culture which is like what the what what the degenerates are doing today, right?
13:31
Like what the daytime TV watchers are doing today, we're all going to do.
13:35
I remember hearing about musically and being like oh people are doing like lip-synced lip-sync videos on their phone like that's stupid.
13:42
And then sure enough you know, TikTok buys musically and becomes huge.
13:46
And sure enough you're now making videos where you're lip-syncing and you haven't shared it here, but we all know you do it. What what's another one? All right.
13:55
Next trend that I want to do is one that you probably know a lot about. It's a fitness trend.
14:01
Trend number two is rucking.
14:06
Which is first of all just an amazing word, rucking.
14:08
And secondly, I just keep seeing this and I've seen it four or five times from four or five of the right people and it instantly resonates when you hear it, which tells me that this is just going to spread more and more. So what is rucking, Sam? You want to describe it?
14:23
You put a heavy bag on your body and you go for a walk.
14:26
It turns the the hot girl walk into a workout.
14:31
So you know how you go for walks in the morning, except now you do it with a 20 lb pack on.
14:34
You you either wear a backpack or like a I like the ones that are like the weighted vest.
14:41
It's like a bulletproof vest looking thing.
14:42
Like Yeah, so that's the downside of all this by the way.
14:45
I do it like particularly when my daughter when she was born and it's like you know how when you want to get steps in when the kid goes to sleep cuz they're sleeping all the time.
14:52
I and that's when I really got into it.
14:55
I would put First of all, I screwed up.
14:56
I would put a 40 lb vest on cuz I thought that was like well more is better and then your back is like killing.
15:01
So I'm like all right, 20 lbs is is more than plenty.
15:06
And then you just walk, but if you put your heart rate I would put my heart rate monitor on an hour walk, it would be 120 beats per minute, which is like a pretty like hardcore walk and it didn't feel that bad.
15:17
So it basically supercharges a walk, so you get more fitness out of a leisure activity. Yeah, exactly.
15:25
And there's these charts you can see like I'll put this up on the on YouTube, but it's basically calories burned.
15:29
So in the same amount of time just walking but wearing the rucking vest, you will burn about like 200 more calories.
15:36
So um which is enough to put you like in a if if you did nothing else different, you would now you might go from you know, surplus to a deficit or right or break even to a deficit. significantly harder.
15:50
It's not significantly harder, right?
15:51
And so I think this is going to be a big trend.
15:55
It's sort of like pickleball where pickleball was the much more accessible version of tennis.
15:59
I think that rucking is one of the most accessible versions of fitness.
16:03
Cuz my like my parents in their 60s will go for walks and I think that over time if you realize that hey, if I wear this 15 lb vest, I'm getting much more of a benefit without having to then without having to like go learn a new thing or do a new thing or add in an extra workout, I think that's going to be really popular.
16:22
Like I want to buy one of these.
16:23
And then I looked at some of the brands that are taking advantage of this trend, right?
16:27
Cuz you see you see people talking about this.
16:29
You see Huberman and others talking about how rucking is really good, how it's there's like this thing low-intensity steady-state cardio, which is known to be like really good for fat loss and it's basically just like walking at a moderate pace for a lot like 40 minutes or 45 minutes for like a longer period of time and how that's actually better for weight loss than than like you know, traditional high-intensity cardio.
16:50
And so then you go look at these brands.
16:54
Have you seen this brand GoRuck?
16:54
Do you know about these guys?
16:56
No, let me look at GoRuck.
16:57
The issue that I've had with a lot of these packs is like I would do my walk sometimes at night and it would it looks like I'm wearing a bulletproof vest and like The issue or the benefit?
17:07
Cuz that's like the main reason I'm trying to get one.
17:10
Dude, they like like people would see me at like and I there one walk in particular I was walking at night and people kind of stared at me funny and then Neville saw me on a walk.
17:19
He goes dude, you look like you're about to go like on a shooting.
17:23
You look like you have like a bulletproof vest on.
17:24
I was like man, everyone's been staring at me.
17:27
I because because it just looks very intimidating.
17:30
You do have I got the look.
17:32
Yeah, I had the look and so I had to I actually went and bought a different one that looked less like a bulletproof vesty.
17:39
And so this company GoRuck, it looks like they make backpack they're basically backpacks, right?
17:43
They do it as a back I think the backpack is their hero skew, but they have they have a vest too.
17:47
Um I was interested I probably wouldn't have even realized they're looking at me for the wrong reason.
17:52
I would have thought they all think I look so cool um and that's why they're staring at me.
17:57
Like dude, if I could wear like a Superman cape and get away with it, I would.
17:59
Like why would I not want to feel like a superhero or like a Navy SEAL.
18:01
So this this brand was started by I think an ex is an ex-military guy.
18:07
I don't know if he's a Marine or what he was.
18:09
And he was like yeah, like this is like a big deal in the in in the Marines.
18:13
And so he created this brand called GoRuck and he started partnering with these kind of fitness and toughness influencers. And he influencer?
18:23
That's a Yeah, a toughness influencer.
18:25
David Goggins, what is he? Yeah, you're right. influencer.
18:27
He's a toughness influencer. What's Jaco? What's Jaco?
18:31
Jaco's a toughness influencer.
18:32
Did you just make this up or is that the category?
18:34
On the spot, off the dome, off the cuff. That's me.
18:37
a tough a toughness influencer. Okay, cool.
18:38
And so the so and as you can see like that that's a trend and so they they take off.
18:46
I guess they're doing like over 50 million a year in revenue now. Really?
18:51
So they're doing really well. Um What do you know?
18:55
turned it into a whole lifestyle brand.
18:56
I mean they they announced it.
18:56
They were like 46 million last year.
18:57
So you know, they're they're going to be higher than this year.
19:00
So they they also do shoes and shorts and like shirts.
19:03
Like it's a whole like lifestyle brand now.
19:05
And I think this is really smart and I think a lot of people do this.
19:09
Now where's the opportunity?
19:10
I think the opportunity is go look at the prices on their website.
19:14
Like how how expensive is their like ruck bag? 450 bucks. Correct.
19:16
$420 for just one that I'm seeing here.
19:24
My friends, it's time to undercut.
19:28
I think if I was going to enter this space, I would be trying to go be the the lowest cost good enough solution.
19:35
Which is never a sexy pitch, right?
19:35
The sexy pitch is we're the highest quality, most premium, most unique, made in America.
19:41
That's their pitch, right? $450 backpack.
19:46
That's great and there will be somebody in that category, but guess who makes more money?
19:50
The good enough at the at the more accessible price point almost always makes more money.
19:56
Like when we were hanging out with Mr.
19:57
Beast and he's like talking about chocolate and he's like, "Yeah, Hershey's was whatever."
20:00
And all of the people there were basically like rich people who either don't even grocery shop for themselves anymore or like only eat Whole Foods.
20:07
And we were like, "We like Hu Chocolate."
20:09
It's like, "I like their cashew butter, you know, like $7 chocolate bar."
20:14
And he's like, "Yeah, yeah, their their chocolate's great."
20:18
But Americans can't buy $7 chocolate bars.
20:20
Like he's like, "We sell at Walmart."
20:23
And look where Hu is at Walmart.
20:23
And it was like like so off to the side in this like one tiny little footprint area because again, it's not the like mainstream price point.
20:32
So I would be trying to build the the sort of like Walmart rock brand.
20:36
And I know that's not really sexy, but it would work very well. Do you remember Echelon?
20:40
So when Peloton was really popular, me and I I don't think you went, but for some reason I was there with Moises at the C CES, the electronic show, and there was this booth for this fitness like bike called Echelon and it was 100% identical to Peloton.
21:01
There was only one difference is that it was half the price.
21:03
And it was called Echelon and I think they got sued by Peloton, but they still exist and everything that Peloton has Echelon has.
21:12
It's just literally half the price.
21:12
But it's the same it's the same logo, it's the same everything.
21:16
Dude, have you did you have you ever seen Echelon? They're at Costco.
21:20
They're they are the hero fitness product at Costco and which is again the same thing like the Costco price point.
21:26
And what they did was they just like, "Oh, Peloton, great we got the trend.
21:31
We even got the brand, we got the shape of the bike, we got the whole arsenal. Awesome."
21:37
And they literally like took a like a knife and just scraped off the letters off the bike and were like, "Here's a new sticker, Echelon."
21:45
It's even like a chat GPT name.
21:48
Like it was uh I I think they even got sued.
21:50
Looks like they changed their logo.
21:52
They were literally the exact same red.
21:53
It was everything was the same.
21:55
Uh and I remember like going to the CES booth and I'm like, "Wait, is this are you guys like a sub brand of Peloton? What's going on here?"
22:00
Uh and they said like not familiar with that brand.
22:02
Uh we we we have no comment and no familiarity with that brand. Completely coincidental.
22:10
All right, I want to do the next one.
22:12
The the the next one that you have is pretty cool.
22:14
Um the did you see the tweet that I have there for your next one?
22:17
That's a that's a good a good way to kick it off. Okay, do it. All right.
22:21
So you have plastic-free everything.
22:23
So you're on board with plastic-free.
22:25
Is that what you guys are doing at your house?
22:28
I'm I'm not hardcore about plastic-free.
22:31
Like we still have plastic stuff and whatever.
22:33
I can I mean I can't say I can't with a straight face be like, "Okay, we're eliminating all plastic from our life."
22:39
and then I'm like giving my kids Kraft Mac and Cheese sometimes.
22:42
So like you know, I'm like common sense test fails.
22:45
Do you have uh do you go out of your way to buy cotton clothing or natural clothing? Yeah, I try to.
22:52
I try to I try to use I try to buy the highest quality stuff for myself because I know I can you know, like with my kids that's that's the the monkey wrench, right?
23:00
Like I can't get my kids to eat certain things yet.
23:01
Um and so you know, that's where we we fall apart a little bit.
23:06
So the trend that you care about you had plastic-free everything and I had saved a tweet by this guy named Miles Snyder.
23:11
It happened March 2nd, so only 10 days ago from when we're recording this.
23:16
And he said, "Lululemon and Vuori really psyop'd the whole generation."
23:20
Which by the way, psyop'd that's a new word.
23:22
Have you noticed that word is trending?
23:24
It's it's trending like crazy. Psyop'd is in. Psyop'd is in.
23:26
Uh it's something psyop'd.
23:30
I don't know what else is trending, but those those two are on my radar.
23:33
Someone tweeted out that they psyop'd me and I didn't understand what it meant and so I still don't entirely understand, but I was like, "Is that like an insult towards me?"
23:40
Uh so he said, "Lululemon and Vuori really psyop'd the whole generation.
23:45
$70 shorts made from plastic and petroleum that smell disgusting every time you work out in them and they destroy your fertility.
23:52
Meanwhile, cotton shorts are cheaper, comfier, and better on every metric."
23:56
And so you had listed here plastic-free everything.
24:00
I think that the obvious thing that's going on right now is plastic-free or Teflon-free pans, which is in the same ballpark.
24:07
But like for example, at my house we only have glass Tupperware and so we more uppity than any sentence that starts with at my house. At my house.
24:19
And the next the end of that has to be uppity and literally you just spit on and on somebody every time you anytime any somebody uses that phrase.
24:27
Not you particularly, I'm just saying. estate. At my estate. At the Parr estate. At Parr Manor. It's class only. How dare you?
24:37
For the record, I have Diet Mountain Dew in the refrigerator right now.
24:41
Uh so I think I can get away with saying this.
24:43
You have tobacco in your lip presently.
24:45
You're worried about microplastics.
24:48
You have a hole in your gum.
24:48
Yeah, so I think I can get away with it sometimes.
24:52
But you know, we don't do plastic stuff.
24:54
Uh plastic like anything that goes in the microwave it's not plastic.
24:55
But now our due thing is like uh my daughter has this thing she calls her baby.
24:59
I said, "What do they call it? Lovey? Loveys?" or whatever.
25:02
You know, like the I don't even know what they are, but uh we're doing all cotton those, which by the way, they're like way less comfortable.
25:09
Uh I understand why like uh uh Do you use a plastic pacifier? In your mouth?
25:14
No, we don't give her we we she quit taking the pacifier at 3 months.
25:19
Uh but and we even have glass bottles.
25:22
Uh but it's like a bunch of like glass stuff. And we're not crazy.
25:24
Like we use the Teflon pan for like scrambled eggs.
25:28
That's like the only thing that we can't get away with for nonstick.
25:29
But uh it mostly is not plastic and and we are taking it to close.
25:34
So a company that I like I have no affiliation with them.
25:37
I just think they're cool is Rhone clothing. Have you seen them?
25:40
They're uh Yeah, I just I actually just ordered some of their stuff cuz I want to try it out. It just arrived.
25:45
So I'm going to I love it. It's great. give an honest review.
25:47
Uh I think they're cool, but like it's really actually hard finding all cotton workout gear.
25:54
Um and so I'm on board with the plastic-free trend.
25:57
By the way, I'm also so prepared for somebody to be like, "Oh my god, cotton? Haven't you heard?"
26:00
and then be like, "Cotton is a lie." Like cotton is huge lie.
26:05
It's like when Joe Gebbia told us that recycling was a lie.
26:06
Have you heard this this bit?
26:08
I've been saying this for years.
26:10
Recycling is 100% It should be reduce, reuse, get rid of the recycle.
26:17
And you're saying it because what?
26:17
It all gets thrown away in the trash.
26:19
Like it recycling is not that But there's even more to it that he told us about.
26:25
I want to get him on to do his recycling rant cuz he's got like a great recycling rant.
26:29
But I believe that one of the core things is recycling is a psyop'd. You ready? Recycling is a psyop'd.
26:35
Which was that they the plas the companies that make all the plastic products were like under some heat.
26:41
They're like, "Oh this is like really bad."
26:43
And they're like, "What do we do? What do we do? What do we do? What do we do? We blame the consumer."
26:46
And they were like, "Blame the consumer, that's brilliant. How do we do that?"
26:50
And they were like, "What if we made it their job to deal with the plastic?"
26:51
And they're like, "How would we do that?"
26:55
Like we convince them that they it's the obligation is on them to recycle these products.
27:00
And so they they funded the like recycle movement knowing that it's like most of it's not getting recycled anyways, it doesn't really work.
27:06
Dude, the blue bins are They're Yeah.
27:11
They're totally cotton cotton's next.
27:13
I'm saying I I can I can feel it coming.
27:17
They could You know what I often would do with the blue bins and it would like freak out people.
27:20
I remember people at my office, the hippies that like the like typical like granola people at my company would like complain to me, but I'm like, "Just throw the trash in the recycle bin. It doesn't matter.
27:29
It's all going to the same place."
27:31
And they would like flip out to like it would like I could tell they were like were losing sleep over this because they based their personality on this blue bin has always been my like it's okay to consume this and throw it away.
27:44
But it all goes to the trash and instead we should just reduce the the stuff we consume or we should reuse what we can.
27:50
But the blue bin I can't stand the blue bin.
27:53
So Joe and I are are are the same on this one.
27:57
So I'm on board with plastic everything.
27:59
So plastic-free everything.
27:59
I think this is going to extend into clothes.
28:00
I think I think it's going to extend into um like homeware, pans, everything. Like cups that you use.
28:06
I think it's going to extend into baby products.
28:08
All baby products I think are going to there's going to be a the way that Honest came out with Jessica Alba and was like, "These juices are full of sugar."
28:16
So they're like Honest juice.
28:18
And I think that and they have you know, they have wipes and they have diapers and they're like, "Oh yeah, you know, you need to use these these products."
28:25
I think there's going to be a plastic-free um big brand that gets built in the baby space because know what that used to be, right?
28:31
My I grew up using this because my parents were a little hippy.
28:35
It was cloth diapers that you threw into a hamper and then you had to wash them. It was disgusting.
28:42
And for that reason, I'm out.
28:45
It was it was honestly filthy, but my mother tried to propose that by the way.
28:48
She was like, "I think we should cloth diaper."
28:51
It is like of disgust I gave her, I I mean I was I was just like, "Listen, you can cheat on me. You can abuse me.
28:58
You can do whatever you want.
29:00
You will not bring cloth diapering into my lifestyle."
29:03
There's usually my parents used to do and we were poor and so they would they said it was cheaper, but they had a service that would come and pick it up once a week.
29:11
But it's still just like the idea of using cloth that other kids have in, it's that's it's filthy. Like for animals.
29:21
So the cloth diapers are not even just your cloth it's a mixed pool of cloth?
29:26
It was like a wash and fold it was like a wash and fold service except the stuff the clothing It had poop in it.
29:32
And so it was basically you throw it into this bin and they come and pick it up and then they bring you new cloth diapers that are clean and you're just like reusing them.
29:42
Yeah, it's like this it is it's disgusting.
29:43
But Uh, that's what that's how it used to be.
29:48
Which now what I'm saying this, by the way, this is kind of an interesting uh, you know, we had um, Jake on or Zach, whatever, the the young guy the other day who talked about how he thinks of ideas through Jake Zach, same thing. The kid.
30:01
We had uh, what was his name? Is it Zach was his name?
30:03
Um, we had Zach on and he was talking about how um, when you ask him how he comes up with ideas, and he's like, "I just think about what would be awesome in an ad."
30:12
And a cloth diaper is like revolting thing, but it is clickable and it is interesting.
30:16
Uh, so I actually am on board with cloth diapers now.
30:20
I just talked myself into it. Sounds good.
30:24
I also think, by the way, for plastic-free everything, that's there's got to be a supplement that people are going to try to sell that's going to like remove the plastic from your balls and your blood bloodstream.
30:32
I think people are going to get on the, you know, every category's going to going to try to to take this angle and I think that it's um, it's sort of like protein, how protein, you know, became a thing.
30:46
It's like, "Great, eat more meat."
30:47
And then they're like, "Or take this powder.
30:49
Or you want protein chips?
30:52
How about protein cookies?
30:52
How about protein brownies?
30:53
How about protein everything?
30:54
And protein waffles, protein pancakes."
30:57
And so protein just made its way into everything on the protein wave.
31:00
Dude, I had protein water yesterday. It was amazing. water?
31:06
It was basically water with like uh, it was a scoop that looked like lemonade mix and it was high protein.
31:13
And it sounded filthy and disgusting and it was delicious.
31:16
That's how I drink my protein shakes.
31:16
I just pour a scoop in water.
31:18
Did it taste just like that? Cuz that tastes nasty.
31:21
There's something cool where you think creamy and protein, that for some reason that's okay, but fruity and protein, that's just unacceptable. Do you know what I mean?
31:29
So this was fruity or this was It was fruity. It was lemonade.
31:35
But you said unacceptable, but you liked it.
31:37
Yeah, I loved it, but it I I had to like get over that barrier. Right?
31:42
Is that Was that really hard for you?
31:45
Yeah, like I had to like watch it like a motivational like talk to like figure out how to Yeah, like David Goggins like definitely had to hype me up. How bad do you want it?
31:56
We fight for these inches. All right. So, next one. Ready?
31:58
This is another health trend um, that I think is going to be big.
32:06
Have you ever heard of anybody who's doing nervous system work?
32:09
Our most popular retreat at Hampton is called nervous system reset.
32:12
And people go to the woods and we have a facilitator who guides these things.
32:19
It's very uh, this is totally a niche thing and it was really smart of you to call this out. I so go ahead. Okay, great.
32:25
So you're you're already on this.
32:27
This was I just My spidey sense is tingling.
32:29
I'm hearing a little things. It's the new leaky gut.
32:31
It's the new leaky gut cuz who you know, who doesn't want your nervous system to be reset or to be calmed down, right?
32:37
It's like this thing that's so literally it's your central nervous system. It's so central to you.
32:42
Um, you have your vagus nerve and like all this stuff.
32:46
So, I first got hooked on this cuz my trainer was telling me about this.
32:50
He was talking about like when you work out and what you eat, it's not just about what you do, it's about the state that you're in that your your nervous system is in when you do it.
33:00
I'm like, "What do you mean?"
33:00
He goes, "Well, you have these two um, modes or modalities for your nervous system, parasympathetic and sympathetic.
33:07
Are you familiar with this?"
33:09
Yeah, I know what those I've heard those words before.
33:11
I can't teach a class on this, but I I I I vaguely Here's my bro science, okay?
33:16
My bro science for this, which is probably half wrong.
33:20
But basically you have two two core modes that you could be in.
33:22
One is your fight or flight um, your fight or flight response.
33:26
So, this is where adrenaline, cortisol, you have these hormones that get released and they're they're not just bad, right?
33:33
People say like, "Cortisol is the stress hormone."
33:34
Well, stress stress is good in certain scenarios.
33:36
Adrenaline is good in certain scenarios.
33:38
You don't want to be in that all the time, that's the problem, but you need it when you need it.
33:43
If there's a lion chasing you, you you want to be in fight or flight mode, right?
33:46
Um, the problem is there's no lion chasing us.
33:49
It's just Slack and email and you know, scrolling on on Instagram and feeling like you're not good enough and like looking at your body in the mirror and feeling like you're too fat and you then when you eat you're stress eating or you you're working too hard then you stress eating or you're not sleeping, things like that.
34:04
So, if you're operating in that sympathetic system, which is that fight or flight, um, your body's secreting certain hormones, but then also uh, your body shuts down other functions.
34:14
So, like let's say you stress eat, one of the problems with you stress eat is not only do you overeat or you make poor choices, but your body literally digests less poorly digests more poorly during that when you're in that system, right?
34:25
Because if you're in fight or flight, the body's going to take its resources and say, "Guys, we're not digesting food right now.
34:31
That's not what's important.
34:31
We got to be doing these other things. The lion is chasing us."
34:35
And so, uh, then you have the parasympathetic system, which when you're in it's more rested more relaxed.
34:41
Your body can do things like digest, it can recover, it can do other things.
34:45
And so, literally being able to shift your mood or your state from one to the other is really important. How do you do that?
34:53
Some people get that from exercise.
34:53
Some people get it from the sauna, from the cold plunge.
34:56
Some people get it from breath work.
34:58
Some people get it from meditation.
34:59
There's a bunch of different ways and all of these are a means to an end, which is to calm your nervous system down.
35:05
And a lot of good things happen both health-wise, but also decision-making, creativity.
35:09
You're much you operate differently when you're in different states. Okay, cool.
35:14
Um, we've not So, that's that that's the theory.
35:18
That's where it first got on my radar and I believed it and I I started paying attention to it.
35:21
Well, you've been about uh, breath work for like 4 years now or 5 years now.
35:27
Yeah, and the breath is to me is like cuz I'm always like I'm not trying to supplement or like I'm very skeptical of the flashy hard things.
35:33
So, I always look for advice that nobody could sell me really. you're not. You love that. You love that.
35:40
like in the health in the health space, let's say. Yes. Right?
35:44
Like I like why did I talk about rucking?
35:46
Cuz I'm like, "Oh, it's walking with a little extra weight.
35:47
Cool, that kind of resonates with me.
35:49
It's that's that makes sense."
35:51
Cold plunging, I never really was able to get into because I was like, "I just think this is like this extreme thing that's like seems like it's for show.
36:00
It doesn't I I don't know.
36:02
It didn't really resonate with me in the same way.
36:05
Uh, breath work did cuz it's like, "Oh, yeah, I could tell that literally just controlling my breath for a couple of minutes, I will feel much differently at the at the end of it."
36:12
And it also makes sense to me to like work on my breathing system cuz I'm going to do that, I don't know, 50,000 times a day.
36:17
And I went to a breath work class in San Francisco and I like it made me kind of high. It was awesome.
36:25
Yeah, yeah, well, that's like the Wim Hof stuff.
36:27
You can you can literally hyperventilate yourself and you'll you'll get high, you'll pass out.
36:29
You could do a lot of things. Yeah, it was great.
36:35
That goes more into the category of the extreme, but okay, fair fair enough.
36:36
So, our buddy Jack Smith had come on.
36:39
Remember that thing he told us about on the podcast where he's like, "I went in this room with 50,000 screens of different colors and they he's like basically they flash things, I sit in a lawn chair and I paid these guys 10 like thousands of dollars and it healed me."
36:54
And I was like we were both just like, "Okay, so we were both like, what?"
36:58
one down this like he came to my visited me in my house.
36:59
I live in a tiny suburb in Connecticut.
37:01
There's one, I'm not joking, 200 yards from my house and we went and we went to it. How was it?
37:06
Dude, it was I forgot to bring this up. It was insane.
37:10
So, basically to everyone listening, it's this is like um, 90% of people are going to be like, "That's you're crazy."
37:16
And 10% of the people are going to like be into this.
37:19
It's very like fringe You go to a room and you're surrounded by literally 20 TV screens and it looks like it's playing white like snow, you know, like like when your white noise, yeah.
37:29
Yeah, like where your TV wasn't working.
37:33
And so, and then the room is about the size of let's say, it looks like a like a mini bunk room.
37:39
It was like uh, 50 ft long, 20 ft wide, just a plain room with reclining chairs in it.
37:43
I go in and I sit in the chair and I just like fall asleep. That's all I do.
37:48
And so, I go home when I supposed to fall asleep?
37:51
You're just supposed to do whatever you want.
37:52
You're supposed to relax.
37:54
Are you supposed to close your eyes?
37:54
Are you supposed to what? eyes and relax.
37:55
You're supposed to close your eyes and just relax.
37:57
And I fall asleep and part of me was like, "Did I just do like a Ron Swanson thing where they're like where I'm just standing there meditating and he's like, 'This is so stupid.
38:04
I just stand here and I'm thoughtless.'"
38:06
Like and like, "Yeah, that's the point."
38:07
I was like, "Is that Is that like Is that what I'm complaining about?"
38:09
Is like I just fell asleep and I actually did achieve that.
38:11
I wasn't sure what happened.
38:11
But I go to Jack and I say, "You know, I did kind of like how they had vibrating chairs there.
38:19
Like the vibrating massage chairs they had were amazing."
38:20
And he goes, "Dude, they those chairs weren't plugged in. They were not vibrating.
38:23
They were not The chairs didn't vibrate."
38:25
And I was like, "No, like I vibrated the whole time and it made me relax and I felt I felt so calm."
38:31
And he goes, "Brother, I talked to the owner. I saw the whole thing. Here's a photo.
38:36
It was not a plugged-in chair.
38:39
There was no electricity in this chair. It did not vibrate."
38:42
And I swore that it was vibrating me the whole time. So, something happened.
38:46
So, that's my story with this with this with this place.
38:51
And how is it to be a Scientologist?
38:51
It was, you know, it felt crazy.
38:54
Like it it did the and I was so turned off because the guy who uh, the guy who owned the place explained how like his wife had cancer and he went into debt to start this place and this cured the cancer.
39:07
And I sort of felt like, "These people took advantage of you, man.
39:11
Like, you know, you didn't use modern medicine.
39:13
You're so like delusional. I feel sad for you."
39:14
Which is silly for me to judge, but that was my judgment.
39:18
And yet I left think like my thinking my body was vibrating.
39:21
And so, maybe there was something there. That's all I'm saying.
39:24
Yeah, so I I'm kind of fascinated by this and um, it does feel like something that like someone would like a YouTuber would make up to make like a cool YouTube video or something like a prank video.
39:37
It also feels like like like to hatch in lost like the Dharma Initiative created this thing.
39:44
So, you know, there's definitely a part of me that's like, "Oh my god, this is bullshit."
39:48
However, I do believe that nervous system work makes sense, and who am I to say that that's not one of the methods that would uh you know, reset, rewire, calm, change the frequency. I don't know.
40:00
I don't know all that stuff, but people are really into grounding. You've seen grounding? Go stand in the grass. ain't to me.
40:06
Uh my college friends used to be into this.
40:08
So, they they they would after playing sports, all all the basketball players would do it.
40:12
They would take their socks off, and they would go, and they would stand in the grass because they said they used the word ions.
40:18
Something about negative ions or negative electrons were going from the earth to their body, and that was going to heal them.
40:26
It was the same thing to me as like, do you remember Brett Favre promoting like copper the copper band. The balance band.
40:32
It's And I don't know, man.
40:35
I don't know about any of this.
40:37
I I absolutely don't know about these, and I'm not I I have no I don't know the science.
40:41
I don't know if this work.
40:42
What I'm saying is I think there's market demand. I think this is a trend. I think there's pull.
40:45
I think this is an area where when you talk about it, it has that leaky gut type of thing where people say, "You know what?
40:53
I think I have that problem.
40:53
I think I want that improved."
40:54
And whether it's through this room with screens, whether it's through grounding, whether it's through breathwork, I don't know what it is, but there that's a trend. And I I I see it.
41:03
It's a wave, and I think a lot of people are going to go surf that wave.
41:07
You should go check out one of the What's the screen thing called?
41:08
It's called the uh electro magnetic therapy or something like that. Maybe.
41:14
And let me know if you have a similar experience.
41:15
I'm a hater on it, but I'm telling you I left my body felt different.
41:20
All right, let's do something that's not a health hack real quick.
41:21
I have another one for you. Religion? AI social network? Which one? Um Let's Okay.
41:31
Let's Let's do biohacking and plants.
41:35
Um which I don't have a lot here.
41:35
I'm just going to say it out loud, but there's a moment in time right now.
41:39
So, this is What is this? Trend number three? Four? Uh we did Five. This is five? Okay, five. Trend number five.
41:48
So, trend number five is biohacking plants.
41:49
So, there's a moment in time right here where I think biohacking has never been as popular as it is as it is now, thanks to Bryan Johnson, thanks to uh Ozempic, thanks to people real peptides, people realizing like, "Oh, I can just kind of take this, stab this, do this, eat this, drink this, whatever, and I'm going to improve my own health."
42:11
So, biohacking is a thing.
42:14
Um and AI has changed the game of science because AI is now doing kind of remarkable things.
42:20
I don't know if you've paid attention to AlphaFold or some of the stuff that's coming out of Google where it's basically like AlphaFold is basically a AI um breakthrough where AI was able to predict how proteins fold, which is really important for a couple of reasons, but then I think that the simple explanation is like um the shape of proteins really matters.
42:41
It matters how other things can connect to it.
42:43
It matters how it can connect to other things, how the building blocks can link.
42:45
And it was something that we we didn't as humans know how to do.
42:47
We didn't know how to We knew what was what it was made up of, but we didn't know how it would fold.
42:52
We didn't know the shape of the protein.
42:56
And AlphaFold was I beat all beat all the the it like won the competition of sh- of modeling protein folding.
43:03
And so, let's assume this is only going to get better.
43:06
And And the implication of this is what? We can make new drugs? Yeah, exactly.
43:10
Therapeutics, drugs, um you you know, so you have all these different like these different technologies.
43:14
CRISPR, you have um you know, the protein folding stuff that's going on.
43:18
You have in general an interest in biohacking.
43:20
But the problem is biohacking in humans is really hard.
43:24
And when you biohack in humans, you have to worry about all kinds of health concerns.
43:27
You have to worry about like getting approvals for things.
43:29
It's going to be a long, hard road.
43:31
And so, in the same way that I think the longevity startups that are focused on dogs are going to do well because who doesn't want their dog like to live longer?
43:39
I think that's like a problem everybody has.
43:42
The background of that is that we had Kevin Rose on, and he was trying to create or he invested in a longevity drug company, and their model their their their phase one was using it on dogs cuz that's an easy easier way to get into it.
43:56
Easier way to go to market um and and to test your your products.
43:58
I think the even easier version of this is plants.
44:02
And um I know that like David Friedberg is doing this for a hollow, which is basically like it's basically a biohacking but for different crops.
44:10
So, how do we make a strawberry that does has certain properties?
44:13
Maybe it's resistant to certain bugs, or maybe it can be riper, maybe it can be bigger, maybe it can be juicier, maybe it can grow in different different weather conditions, and therefore can therefore certain places can now grow their own crops that don't have to import, right?
44:28
So, it's like all these like implications if you could biohack plants uh cuz plants are food.
44:30
And so, how do you do biohacking in plants?
44:34
And plants for a long time, like a lot of the like the breakthroughs and people's understanding of genetics was because of plants experiments.
44:42
Like, you breed true crops with each other, and oh, this is how we figured out like, you know, the the little Punnett square about about how genetics can can uh how the genetic combinations work and combinatorial effects of of crossbreeding.
44:56
And so, I think that there's going to be some really successful startups that take AI and the concept of biohacking, and then use plants as their focus as their target market rather than humans.
45:08
What's uh David Friedberg's thing? It's called Hollow.
45:16
And and uh so, it's accelerating evolution to unlock nature's potential.
45:22
That sounds like a great mission.
45:22
Um and and so, he basically they're basically creating new seeds or new style plants, yeah?
45:30
Um I don't know you know, they're they haven't been super like they're not they're not in stealth, but they're not like it's not like super obvious what exactly what they're doing, but like they have this thing like boosted breeding.
45:38
So, it's basically like how do you get more yield on on your crops, right?
45:43
Or they'll have like value-added traits, which is like, how do you take a crop, but then add you know, a a trait that you want, right?
45:49
Gain a function, but not for viruses, but for for your for your strawberries, for your almonds, for your potatoes, for your corn, for core crops.
45:56
And so, this is going to become technology that they're either going to be able to like vertically do themselves, or they're going to sell this to farms and be like And that's kind of what he did with his other thing, you know, climate or whatever.
46:10
This is so much better than working on creator economy software.
46:16
Like, when you're telling me about this, I I'm a I'm a dum-dum.
46:19
I I I will never be able to start anything in this space, but like part of me is like, if I had a friend that started something like this, I would quit everything I'm doing to go work there because this is such an easy mission to get behind. You know?
46:34
Like this is so much more important than creating a new link tree.
46:42
And so much more exciting. And so, I love this.
46:43
I think this is really a really interesting thing to call out.
46:47
Yeah, so that's a trend I'm watching.
46:49
I'll give you another one. AI social network. So, what does this mean?
46:53
Uh every decade or so, a new social network comes out.
46:56
So, you know, you had uh Facebook, which was 2004, and then roughly 2012, you had this next generation of social networks.
47:05
And those were Snapchat, Instagram, and they were taking off.
47:06
Um and so, what did And what did they do differently?
47:11
They took advantage of the new tech.
47:13
And so, the new tech was your phone.
47:14
The phone that had a camera, the phone that had a GPS, the phone that um uh was with you at all times.
47:20
And so, they unlocked a new social use case.
47:25
And I think that the new social use case that's coming out is um is AI.
47:30
So, what is And what what is AI going to be able to do here?
47:32
I don't know exactly what it's going to look like, but I would bet with very high probability This is a bit of a safe bet, I guess, but um I would bet very high probability that the next breakout social app is going to be based on AI.
47:44
Arguably, it already happened.
47:46
Arguably, that TikTok is the breakout uh it was the first breakout AI app, right?
47:51
In the same way that You mean that I'm following AI people as opposed to real people?
47:58
There's a few ways that I could take it.
47:59
So, the the most obvious one was TikTok, which was basically everybody thinks TikTok's big innovation was short-form video, but actually short-form video was around before that, Vine, musically, others.
48:10
What TikTok did was TikTok was like, "Hey, how about how about this?
48:12
How about the AI just tells you what to follow instead of you?"
48:15
So, every social network up until that point was the based on was based on the user creating a graph, so going and following people or friending people.
48:24
And that following or friending people, this was Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, all of them, that you would choose content that's interesting to you, and then you would keep coming to the back to the app because you have content that's interesting for you.
48:35
And that worked to an extent.
48:37
And then TikTok came out was like, "Let's never let the user say what's interesting.
48:42
Let's see if the AI can figure out what's interesting at a higher rate."
48:45
Like almost like we were talking about this crops thing.
48:48
Like, what if you got higher yield of interestingness if you used AI for the feed instead of the human choosing what to follow?
48:55
And so, um and that's what it did.
48:55
And TikTok is super addictive.
48:57
And TikTok has a higher usage rate than every other social platform because the AI is serving you the content instead of you picking yourself.
49:07
So, that was like the first break through, but it's under the hood. You don't see it. It's the algorithm. Okay, cool.
49:12
Um and now, by the way, everybody copied it, and Instagram and and others.
49:14
Everybody's moved to this for you feed.
49:16
The The That was the the real innovation of TikTok is the for you page.
49:18
Um Okay, so what's coming next?
49:20
So, now I'm thinking that the next breakthrough is probably going to be that up till now, all social networks were based on content that humans make.
49:28
And now I think it's going to be based on content that AI makes in some way.
49:32
That sounds a little far-fetched.
49:34
Like, why would I want to follow an AI influencer?
49:35
Well, let's let's first start with one example, Lil Miquela.
49:40
We've talked about her years ago when when they started this.
49:44
Lil Miquela is an Instagram influencer that is just AI generated.
49:48
It's a girl that's like she's an AI uh image basically.
49:52
And they put her She's an Instagrammer and she posts photos.
49:56
Do you know how much money Lil Miquela makes?
49:58
Last we talked about it, it was like interesting but not wild.
50:00
It was like 800 grand a year, I think.
50:03
I think we started talking about her in '20 or so.
50:07
I I don't have this confirmed, but I heard it's over $10 million now. That's insane.
50:11
Okay, so that's Lil Miquela. Miquela.
50:16
Yeah, you and a few million other people like her. likable.
50:18
All right, so that's one.
50:18
But here's a more interesting version of this cuz I think people have heard the AI influence, but let me pitch you a different style of AI social product.
50:27
It's actually in the music space.
50:29
So I think there's an opportunity to create create the AI version of Spotify.
50:33
What I mean by this is I started listening to like a non-trivial non-trivial amount of AI music.
50:39
So like in my pie chart of my market share of music, uh it used to be 100% just like artists, right? Like that I I know.
50:47
So like Spotify or wherever, right?
50:49
That Let's just say that's where I started.
50:50
And now I started adding in a little bit of AI generated music. You go to Suno.
50:55
So Suno uh Suno has a lot of music there, but also there's these YouTube channels.
51:00
Like there's this one called Golden Age Hip Hop, which I don't think is AI.
51:03
I think he might use AI in the making of it, but Golden Age Hip Hop's great great YouTube channel.
51:07
What he does is he makes these mashups, right?
51:09
Like if you go to go to the YouTube channel. to it, too.
51:12
And then like Mac Miller lofi or like main character playlist.
51:13
Uh for some I've I've I I'm getting recommended all of these, and at first I was like this is weird.
51:23
And lately I'm attracted to them even more and like going to It's like what I listen to all day when I work uh This is my new workout track.
51:29
So Golden Age Hip Hop is uh if you look at the channels, it's got 800,000 730,000 subscribers.
51:38
Every thumbnail is AI generated. Yes.
51:41
All of the concepts are like things that don't even make sense.
51:43
It's like, wait, so this is uh it'll be like somebody from the like '80s and then like somebody from the 2000s collabing on a song.
51:50
Or like all the top top songs are like, you know, like if I just sort by popular.
51:54
So this one has 11 million views.
51:56
It's Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, DMX or Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Dr.
51:58
Dre, uh 50 Cent, Exhibit, and and Ice Cube all on one track. You're like, what?
52:03
That that never happened.
52:04
Uh and that that song has 8 million plays.
52:09
And what it I think what the person is doing is I think they're just like a mashup artist more like Girl Talk where they they're just sampling from different songs and and overlaying them well together. Yes.
52:17
But I think there's a little bit of sign to come.
52:20
Like I wouldn't be surprised if they're using AI to do this or if they're just going to take a a a voice uh artist's voice and just use AI to make a song from it.
52:28
Like I think you tweeted something out.
52:30
Didn't you tweet out that like the number one song right now was an AI song?
52:36
Uh it was um the Beatles won a Grammy this year and it didn't get talked a lot a lot about, but basically they had lyrics from when John Lennon was alive and they used uh machine learning and and AI and they finished the song and it won a Grammy and it's a great song. Like that's crazy. It's crazy.
52:56
Nobody's even talked about that.
52:58
You're the only person I know who talked about that.
52:59
I saw it and I was reading about this and I was like, this is a huge deal.
53:02
Why isn't anyone discussing this?
53:03
I felt like it was a totally undercovered story. Uh and the song's great.
53:09
It's It's not that nobody's talking about it.
53:10
You're right, under like less underreported uh story.
53:12
So here's what I think's going to happen.
53:15
I think you're going to have a a service.
53:16
It's sort of like a Pandora or a Spotify where you're going to prompt it or you're going to tell it what songs you like and it's just going to start generating AI music on the fly.
53:25
And what's going to happen is it's going to generate music that's in the genres you like.
53:28
It's going to figure out It's going to basically train on the songs that exist and it's going to create net new songs.
53:35
And I think the last piece of what's going to happen there is in the same way that today you have what's called like vibe coders.
53:40
You know what you know what vibe coding is?
53:43
I'm still trying to figure this out.
53:43
I did this this this got on my this got on my radar on Monday.
53:47
This is how new I am to vibe coding.
53:50
All right, so there's there's a couple of startups like this cursor cursor cursor.
53:55
Peter Levels is how I know about it.
53:57
Okay, so there's a couple of startups like Cursor, which is like absolutely blown up.
54:00
I think it's become like a two or three billion dollar company or 10 billion dollar company in a very short period of time.
54:05
Cursor is basically like a coding terminal, but you can but AI is built in, right?
54:09
And so you can code, but you can basically like just tell the AI it'll write the code for you.
54:14
They can tell it to debug it for you.
54:16
You can tell it to build for you.
54:17
Replit is doing the same thing. You go to replit.
54:19
com now and it just says, what would you like me to build?
54:21
And you just tell Replit like, hey, I'd like an app that does blah blah blah blah blah.
54:26
And then it's just it starts spitting out code on the screen.
54:28
Just scrolling like huge amounts of code and then you'll see it thinking.
54:31
It's like, hmm, I can't The initial screen's not loading properly. Let me see what's wrong. Ah, I found it.
54:36
And then it just like continues on.
54:37
So it can be kind of amazing to watch.
54:38
And I've built a bunch of little Replit apps that way.
54:40
Um and so this is like, you know, basically what's happening now is that people are going to be able to make software without knowing how to write code.
54:47
What I think is going to happen next is I'm going to be able to make music without knowing how to make music, without knowing how to play instruments or sing.
54:54
So what's going to happen is I'm going to be I'm just going to be able to prompt the music or tell it what I want or tell it how to tweak the songs and then I'm going to make it.
55:02
And then by the way, you ready for me to just go full-blown full-blown, you know, idiot here?
55:09
I'm going to say three letters that you're not going to like. Okay. NFTs. They're coming in here.
55:15
So here's here's the business model.
55:17
Here's where this actually pairs up.
55:19
And this is not so crazy.
55:19
Well, listen listen to this.
55:20
So Do you remember when uh you used to say they you used to celebrate like, ding ding ding, we found a use case. Yeah. Is this it now? We found a use case. Exactly.
55:29
So Ladies and gentlemen, we did it. What is an NFT?
55:32
An NFT is basically uh any kind of digital collectible, digital art, digital property uh that's unique.
55:39
It's a way to say that this is unique and I own this, I made this, and if you bought it, now you own this.
55:43
Uh and I and it shows who made it and the royalties are attached to it.
55:46
This kind of a actually like a kind of a cool thing.
55:49
If I make art in Photoshop, which I think both of us would agree is art, right? Yeah, of course.
55:54
being able to say that I made this and nobody can say that they made it, that's important.
55:58
Being able to sell my art, also important.
56:00
And if you sell it, me being able to capture a royalty of subsequent sales, also cool.
56:04
So I think we all agree that that's actually pretty cool as obnoxious as NFTs became to be.
56:10
Now what's going to happen in the music case is I'm going to be generating music with AI and I'm going to be able to mint that song.
56:15
So I'm going to be able to say, that song, I helped create that by prompting it. I'm going to create it.
56:20
All of the artists whose music was used, I think they're going to get partial ownership of that.
56:25
And now I'm going to be able to upload that track as a musician, but in the same way that like, you know, a lot of musicians today, they're using like uh autotune and like, you know, just like basically digital pro They're not They're not sitting there with a guitar strumming.
56:39
Like they're they're in a piece of software making uh the computer strum the guitar and they just type in the notes A B C D and then the the, you know, they'll type in the chord and the the guitar just plays it.
56:49
It's kind of like to a pure musician, they're like, that's not music.
56:52
That's you're just cheating.
56:54
I think that's what's going to happen next I think with AI.
56:57
And so I think the next version of Pandora or Spotify to the next big social product that's around music is going to be about creating music using AI, being able to mint it as a curator saying, oh, this is cool. I like this.
57:10
I'll pay to create this and to own this.
57:12
And then I'll share that with other people and then I will get like the way this Golden Age Hip Hop guy is getting 10 million streams on his songs, I think somebody who's a a non-musician would be able to get that.
57:21
Did I just go crazy or what just happened?
57:22
No, I I think that's very smart.
57:25
I think you're I think you're doing a good job of looking ahead and I agree with the future that you're painting.
57:30
I think that I'm shocked I'm shocked so far that music has been as uh not with AI it's been and it I guess this makes sense because the guys making AI are also into this other stuff.
57:41
Uh but uh like AI has been like coding and like just a variety of other tools and I'm shocked that it hasn't impacted art and particularly music as much as as little as it has.
57:52
Um and I think the the future you're painting makes a lot of sense.
57:56
I think that if you were to play me like an AI Post Malone song and a real Post Malone song, I don't think anyone would know the difference. Which is unbelievable.
58:06
We're already there, Yeah, we're already there. We're already there.
58:09
And also if you were if I were to go to a concert, like I would be into going to a concert of a fake person.
58:15
Like do you remember the Gorillaz? Mhm. I loved the Gorillaz.
58:19
I listened to the Gorillaz What What What was their story?
58:21
I mean, I've only heard their songs but never been to a concert.
58:24
The guy who created the Gorillaz is a genius.
58:26
So the Gorillaz, for those listening who are below the age of 30, the Gorillaz was a band.
58:31
It was created by Do you remember Blur? Remember the band Blur?
58:35
So it uh it like a kind of a punk rocky uh guy, but he created the Gorillaz as like a weird like hobby, like a side project where he wrote and this was in the '90s.
58:44
He wrote songs and then he had a music and he sang it. He was the musician.
58:49
He played all the instruments.
58:51
And then he had a music video where it was cartoons and it was animations.
58:53
And so for years uh and this was before the internet was popular, so we couldn't like Google who was behind it.
59:01
It was like rumors and like it was like, you know, you never you didn't actually know, you know, in that in that age how it was. You didn't totally know.
59:08
You're like, I heard it was this guy. I heard it was this guy. I don't know who it is.
59:10
And the Gorillaz was the band that he made. It was a fake band. It was all cartoons.
59:14
They went so far as to being on talk shows.
59:16
And so they would like at the time the tech wasn't great, but they would do holograms, so they appeared on David Letterman and and shows like that.
59:22
And then eventually they would do concerts where they would play At first it was simple and janky.
59:27
It was basically just a movie theater.
59:29
Uh and then eventually they figured out how to hologram it.
59:31
And then now he'll go out and perform.
59:33
Now we all know who the guy is and he'll actually go and perform and it's like amazing.
59:38
But he did all of this before all this technology was a thing.
59:41
And I loved the Gorillaz.
59:44
I don't I don't I loved them before I knew who the person was.
59:47
I just thought like I knew like the characters and I like actually liked them and I got to know the personalities. It was very strange.
59:52
But because I was into that when I was a kid and even as an adult I like it I can now see how it doesn't seem crazy that I'm going to like the AI stuff. Totally. Totally.
1:00:02
I mean Dude, I was so into like WWF growing up, right?
1:00:06
It's like It's like you get into these things that sound on the surface silly, stupid, illogical. Why would you care? It's all fake, right?
1:00:14
It's fake wrestling and then guys are like you know, paying thousands of dollars to sit front row and scream their heart out to like watch it, right?
1:00:21
It's like these things seem on the surface, if you just described it to somebody, it would seem like it wouldn't work, but it does.
1:00:25
And that's the I think the point I'm trying to make with this episode is that these are all trends that today sound small, sound weird but I think in the future are going to be bigger.
1:00:37
And knowing that is good for two reasons.
1:00:39
Either A, you're the type of person who just likes to be in the know, you like to know things before, you maybe like to try products early on before they become cool.
1:00:46
Um, like I I I like to do that.
1:00:49
That that's that's one reason you want to know these.
1:00:52
And the other reason is jumping on trends early is the way to make a lot of money, right?
1:00:57
There are There are riches in these niches if you actually like go go pursue them.
1:01:01
And or you're just going to be the guy that always waits for something to be proven out and then you're going to feel like you're too late every time, right?
1:01:07
So like that's those are your options as an entrepreneur.
1:01:10
And so I think being early to trends is um trends that are going to last or be big is is a great way to get rich. All right.
1:01:16
So the ones we mentioned uh number one, short drama apps.
1:01:19
So mini dramas, these these apps that basically are like Netflix but the episodes are 90 seconds long. They're taking off.
1:01:26
Four apps that are doing over 100 million a year in revenue.
1:01:30
Today they're all Chinese apps.
1:01:31
I think there's an opportunity for somebody to make this uh both like made in America but also for really any geography.
1:01:37
Like make the biggest one of these in Brazil.
1:01:39
Make the biggest one of these in India.
1:01:40
These are going to be very very big.
1:01:41
The next one, fitness trends.
1:01:44
So rucking we had which is walking with weighted vest.
1:01:46
Go Ruck doing over 50 million a year in revenue.
1:01:50
Shirtless ripped guys are going to just tear you up in the comments saying, "Sean, we've been here." Of course.
1:01:54
And I I say, "Congratulations on being early."
1:01:59
Uh plastic-free everything.
1:01:59
So I think just microplastics being something that people that the next thing people are going to be afraid of and then figuring out how to sell solutions to that fear.
1:02:09
Nervous system work, we talked about.
1:02:09
So the parasympathetic nervous system.
1:02:13
People who who create solutions that that are marketed towards calming or tuning or resetting your nervous system, a reboot for your nervous system.
1:02:24
Uh we talked about biohacking for plants.
1:02:25
So uh AI plus biohacking but using plants as a go-to-market because it's a lot safer, you can kill plants and nobody cares.
1:02:33
Uh and ultimately there's a huge market of improving crops and the food that we all eat.
1:02:37
Uh and then the last one that we talked about is the AI social networks.
1:02:40
So every decade or so there's a new big hit social product, Facebook then Instagram, Snapchat, now TikTok.
1:02:47
We're It's time we are due for a new one and the twist will be that the content is somehow generated with AI.
1:02:54
I I pitched a music one but there's probably many other variations of that.
1:02:57
That was very educational. Good job.
1:02:59
You you uh you came with the goods.
1:03:02
You carried us on this one and I think you did a wonderful job. So thank you. Thank you.
1:03:06
Let us know in the comments which trends you like in the YouTube comments and I'll be replying to uh to all of them. All right. That's it. That's the pod.